A journey into what has gone from a fun, part time hobby to a fulfilling and rewarding obsession.. Culminating in a style I like to call "Authentic Southern (Utah) Barbecue"

Thursday, February 27, 2014

You always remember your first time...

Now that the pit was seasoned, or at least to a point I was
comfortable that all the processing crud was pretty much gone, it was time test
it out and actually use it for what it was meant.During the seasoning period I didn’t really
get a good chance to mess with the damper and draft controls and since my
intention was to use wood I figured there was going to bit of another learning
curve.To my surprise, it really wasn’t
too bad.

First off I got a small amount of coals going, (half a
chimney give or take), until they were good and ashed over then put them in the
middle of the grate.I flattened them
out to give as much surface area as possible for the wood to sit on.Since I wasn’t real sure what size pieces the
wood should be, I started with 3 or 4 pieces about the size of my wrist and 12
to 14 inches long.I left the door open
until the wood caught fire then closed it to see what the temps would do.Right away I discovered that I needed to
leave the door open longer and let the wood really get burning before closing
things down and working with the draft.Once things were burning good and the temp came up, I began to work with
the draft and dampers to see how various adjustments affected the inside
temp.It didn’t take long to discover
that the adjustments did not need to be very big to make a big difference.I took about an hour moving the draft in and
out and found that the temp could be easily changed by moving the bolts no more
than about a quarter of a turn then giving the pit about 10 minutes or so to
stabilize.I also discovered that the
damper did not make much of a difference so, for the time being I just left it
wide open.

A couple of items of note at this point, it was discovered
that the wood splits should not be more than about 10 to 12 inches long and no
bigger than your wrist.If they are too
long, once the center of the split burns through the ends have a tendency to
fall away from the main pile and will smolder and not burn very well.If they are too big around it takes a long
time for them to get burning adequately and will also cause the fire to
smolder.As has been said numerous
times, it is better to have a small hot fire so I can attest to the validity of
this.I also found out that by keeping
the wood to this size, I only needed to add more about every 45 minutes to an
hour and it certainly didn’t need to be 3 or 4 pieces.1 or 2 at a time was plenty.I am at 6,000 ft. ASL so this process may be
different for someone else at lower altitudes; it’s all about the combustion.

First Ribs with Rib Tips

I fiddled with the controls and fire size for about another
2 hours trying to get a feel for what it would do and once I was comfortable
with it, it was time to get cooking.For
the first cook I went with 3 racks of spare ribs.Since I knew the cooking time wasn’t going to
take all day and if I messed them up I wouldn’t be worried about the cost, I
figured it would be a good start.I had
the pit rolling with Oak wood and stuck with my usual way of rubbing them with
my own variety of rub with the intent to continue to follow the 3-2-1
method.The ribs were full spares so I
cut them down St. Louis style and besides the ribs I also threw on the tips
that had been cut from the racks.

First Ribs

Things started off great once I put them on but I found
myself making the same mistake I did in the past; thinking that I needed to be
always messing with the controls.I was
hoping to get the temp to hold around 245 to 250 degrees but since I was
playing with the controls too much I was getting big spikes both up and down in
the pit.I sat and thought about it for
awhile and remembered several places had mentioned some pits just run where
they want to run.So, with nothing to
lose, I set the draft at what seemed to be a good point and just let it
roll.Oddly enough, I found the sweet
spot to be right around 260 degrees.I
did move the draft and damper a couple of times to see what would happen but it
either caused the pit to get quite hot or on the other end it would cause too
much smoke.From that point I have been
able to better control the temps with either slightly bigger or smaller pieces
of wood or by adjusting the draft and damper but for the most part, it wants to
run best at the 260 degree mark.

Coming out of the foil

Overall the cook went pretty well and I was happy with the
results. With me messing with the
controls so much and opening and closing the doors and firebox the flavor I
wanted wasn’t quite there but my expectations weren’t really that high either considering
I knew I would be learning the pits properties and used this more of an
educational event.Don’t get me wrong,
the ribs turned out great but I knew they could be better and it was going to
just take some time and a better understanding of what needed to be done, or
not done, over the course of the cook.I
have also discovered over time that when I do ribs on the pit, the method works
better with the times being changed to 3-1/12-.75, (3 hours in the smoke, 1 ½ hours
in foil and finish them off for around 45 minutes).If I cook them for the full 6 hours they come
out a bit overcooked.No big deal…just
needed some time to get it all tuned in.